California jurors have found 84-year-old actor Bill Cosby responsible – a term used in American justice as a culprit in civil litigation – for Judy Hutt’s sexual assault in 1975 when he was 16 years old. Cosby has to pay $ 500,000 in damages to the victim.
The sentence came a year after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his recent conviction for sexual assault on the grounds that he had not received a fair trial, sparking a wave of shock and outrage. Up to that point, the actress had spent two years in a state jail near Philadelphia and was the first known person to be prosecuted in the Me Too era of the movement, which seeks to make visible the oppression and inequality of women. He was sentenced to ten years in prison in 2004 for sexually assaulting Andrea Constant. Cosby was arrested in 2015 and when the trial ended in April 2018, he was tried on three different charges of sexual assault.
According to a Santa Monica jury that charged him, Cosby provoked sexual contact with a young woman because he knew she was a minor. The victim, who is currently 64 years old, filed a civil suit in 2014 and despite the fact that there were legal precedents that justified the accusation in the appointment. Instead, jurors have acknowledged that California law extends the term of this type of trial if the victim was a minor at the time of the attack.
Bill Cosby did not appear at any of these hearings, citing the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gives any person the right not to testify if their words could be used to commit a crime. Cosby has opened another file in New Jersey where another actor accuses him of sexual assault.
Beyond the door of Playboy Palace
At the trial, which lasted three weeks, Judy Hutt’s defense said she met Bill Cosby’s friend, Donna Samuelson, while playing sports while filming. Let’s do this again. The lawyer argued that Bill Cosby first used safe spaces for the young woman, such as a public park, to gain her trust. And that he subsequently invited her to the Playboy Palace in Arcade.
Samuelson testified at the trial. “He told me that Bill Cosby tried to have sex with him (…) and asked me to leave immediately,” he said of the incident when a comedian tried to put Hutt’s hand in his pants and forced him to do so. To carry out sexual practices on it.
“This is a huge step for all the victims,” Hutt told reporters after leaving the hearing. “It’s time for her to pay for what she has done for so many women,” she added.
Source: El Diario
